Foundry Group Invests in Sifteo

Sifteo is a game-platform development company that has developed “Siftables” the world’s first table-top gaming platform. Siftables are sets of cookie-sized computers with motion sensing, neighbor detection, graphical display, and wireless communication capabilities that act in concert to form a single interface: users physically manipulate them by piling, grouping and sorting to interact with digital information and media.

As cool as this sounds, it’s not nearly as cool as the company’s TED talk and demo below.

Founded by David Merrill and Jeevan Kalanithi, out of the MIT Media Lab, we believe that Sifteo is developing the next generation popular gaming platform that will go beyond the early successes of the Nintendo Wii and Apple iPad/Pod/Touch.

The Sifteo platform will have an easy to use SDK that will allow developers to create and sell games on the system. The tools includes a gesture recognition system that abstracts user actions, such as grouping and sorting, into events the designer can easily attach to software events. Overall, the system radically simplifies and speeds game development.

Most importantly, Siftables are fun. The embedded video shows but a couple of possibilities, but we really look forward to seeing all the of the creative content that is developed on the platform.

We really look forward to working with Jeevan, Dave and the rest of the team, including returning investors and our friends from True Ventures.

This is awesome. I hope the guys can protect also the software app side of the technology. Imagine anyone who has downloaded this as an App to their mobile, being able to interact at say a Black Eyed Peas gig or whatever. Would bring a whole new level to audience participation… (this side of the audience say woah!) Now they could play notes and be part of the track itself… Love the product but sense the big deal is in the wider application of the technology…